Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Inoculating Our Children Against Fear and Hatred

“Ewww. Don’t do it, Patrick. Don’t do it. Dogs pee here.”A woman was giving my husband a hard time because our 10-month-old son had dropped his banana on the ground. Patrick picked it up, licked it and was about to hand it back to our boy. Seamus grabbed for it eagerly and scarfed it down. The woman was disgusted. I was too. Not by Patrick, but by a judgmental woman. “If we threw away everything this child dropped,” I said “he would be skin and bones. We do this kind of thing all the time. As you can see, he is the picture of health.”

I don’t want my kid to eat dog pee, for sure. But I also don’t want him to live in a hermetic bubble of germophobia. I do try to keep him from eating too much sand, dirt, grass and leaves. But he is a curious child and encounters the world with his hands and mouth first. He usually gets some organic matter in his mouth every time I put him down..But I do not freak out every time he puts something “dirty” in his mouth. Dr. Thom McDade, who directs the Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern University, found that “microbial exposures early in life may be important… to keep inflammation in check in adulthood.” It is called the hygiene hypothesis and it is gathering credence amongst health professionals.

Recently I listened to Snap Judgment on NPR. The host, Glynn Washington, described moving with his family from Detroit to rural Michigan when he was a little boy. On the first day of school, he got on the bus. The kids all went quiet: “See, we were the only black folk for miles around.” He tries to sit in the first open seat, but a “tow-headed boy spit on the seat, right where I was going to sit. I kept walking down the aisle and every open seat had spit on it, daring me to sit in it.” He finally found a seat at the very back, next to a little girl who silently moved her backpack to the floor to make room for him. They sat together every day after that.

Then the school bus route changed, so that Glynn got on the bus first. He kept sitting in the back with the girl — Mary Jo. One day she got on the bus smelling awful. It was winter and her family’s pipes had frozen, so she could not shower after doing her farm chores. She masked her unwashed body smell with perfume and when she got on the bus, the whole bus erupted, screaming about how bad she stank. Washington called it the odor of “rotting flowers pressed on top of barn filth.”

At first, he wished that she would sit somewhere else. Then he was ashamed, recalling how she had been the only one who accepted him at all. He moved his backpack to the floor and Mary Jo sat down reeking of perfume and chores. They talked for the first time that day — chatted all the way to school. I cried, thinking about how mean kids can be. I cried, thinking about how kids can rise above it all and be so kind and generous.

Where would Seamus have fit into this story? Would he be a spitter? Over my dead body, I thought. No way. His father and I would see to that. No question.

But would he do more than not spit? Would he rail against his classmates’ prejudice and racism; calling them out, calling them to something better? Or would he be the one to silently move his backpack to the floor? Would he be compassionate and accepting? Would he be brave and principled?

That story happened a while ago — Glynn Washington is probably in his mid-40s (You were hoping he was in his 80s, right? And that this terrible experience could be written off as an early 20th century phenomenon?). Forty years ago. Eight years ago. And right now. Racism, sexism, homophobia, violence and good old fashioned ignorance have not disappeared from the playgrounds and yellow buses of the United States.

Isn’t this the real disease? Isn’t this the real dirty, ugly germ cluster that we need to inoculate our children against? Isn’t protecting our kids from this disease more important than sanitizing their toys?

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About Me

I am not an academic. I have been a commercial beekeeper in New Zealand for most of my working life, except for four years in detention as a conscientious objector during WW2. Those years were particularly formative for me. I have retained my horror of war and the suffering still being caused by armed conflict and violence in so many places. My convictions have been nurtured by my Methodist church connection, though my pacifism has been deplored by some good people.

Expect no slick answers here; I am still a searcher myself. How can a just and peaceful society develop from this chaos, and what are the obstacles in the way?

Most of the articles posted here are from other sources. I look for writers, wherever they can be found, who can throw light on what is happening in our world. If you would like to learn a little more about myself, please read this biographical interview series conducted by my granddaughter, Kyla.